


burn down the house [see what comes out clean]

by crickets



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-20
Updated: 2010-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-20 04:04:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crickets/pseuds/crickets





	burn down the house [see what comes out clean]

Claire dreams of falling.

She's standing at the edge of cliff, her arms spread wide, her tangled hair blowing in the wind.

Falling won't change things.

She'll just open her eyes in another place, another time, some distant, half-life that's almost like her own. So long now, she can't even remember which one is the first, which one is real.

 _Is there a difference?_

"Claire." Jack's voice from behind.

 _She falls_ , waking again in his arms.

-

In this life, Jack is a widower. She doesn't ask him about his wife, who she was, how she died. What would it matter? In the life after this one she may not even exist.

Claire walks through the house one late August afternoon. She collects the aging dresses in the closet, a pair of garden shoes, all the remnants of a woman who means nothing to either of them.

Jack comes home early, tries to stop her, falls to his knees, pulls garments out of her arms, _begs_.

"Stop this," she tells him. "Stop this."

Jack lowers his head and she cradles it in her hands. He's crying now, his face against her stomach, and Claire is absolutely sick of it. "You know what matters to you," she tells him, her voice cruel, but as sure as his fingers wrapped around her bare upper thigh at the spot where her dress has risen up in the exchange. "You know what you want."

Claire closes her eyes, only has to wait a moment before she can feel his cool hands sliding further up her legs.

The truth.

It always wins.

-

She won't tell him this time -- what she's going to do. He'll figure it out sooner or later. She has a place picked out, a nice spot by the lake with a view of the mountains. She'll drive her car into the water, watch as the water floods through the windows, keep her eyes open as long as possible.

 _And then she'll wake up._

She hasn't got a death wish. It's different than that. It's a kind of experiment, an attempt to get it right, for once and for all. The first time they all went together. The second was an accident. And the third, a revelation.

She'll start over, some insignificant moment, some things different, some things the same. And she'll wait for him to come to her, for the two to gravitate towards each other, as of two particles in a collision course. That part is always the same.

 _Some things never change._

And then she'll wait for him to join her, _the real Jack_. Sooner or later he'll wake up. He'll remember things, their life -- _their lives_ \-- together, the feel of her pressed naked against him, the sound of her calling out his name.

Sure as anything, she knows the truth of that.

-

In this life, Jack is happy, unaffected. In this life, Jack smiles more than he ever has in any life before it. And Claire can't get enough.

Claire knows this is the one, the final piece in the puzzle of their merged past histories. She thinks she might just stay this time. She wants to.

 _All there is now is the wait._

-

It's a Sunday morning after a cool rain and Claire is in the garden, a book in one hand and a fresh strawberry in the other, when she hears the sound of the screen door bouncing open and closed again.

"Hey," Jack says, a hand at the back of her neck, his voice different, _changed_.

She looks up, into his eyes.

 _This is him._

 _This is it._

 _-fin_


End file.
